Boduf Songs

Blue Baby;
2004/2005

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Fortifying the acoustic guitar market, solitary folkies continue their
downer parade. One of the more alluring soloists is English bard Mat
Sweet, who records as Boduf Songs. On his self-titled debut he shares a
similar one-sheet with fellow countryman Duncan Sumpner, aka Songs of
Green Pheasant, but where the latter plots a course through shimmering
Simon & Garfunkel psychedelia, Boduf Songs wanders into gloomier
terrain.

Sweet resides in Southampton and runs the small imprint, Blue Baby
Recordings, on which he first issued this LP as a CD-R. As such, he's self-released a number of his own projects,
including Map of Hell's doom sludge, the ambient drone of Pistol At Dawn With
Afterglow, and Four Man Ghost's fuzzed Mogwai post-rock. Other Sweet
offshoots include Randolph Carter (yo, H.P. Lovecraft), Heavy
Manufacturing Concern, and History of Electricity. As Boduf Songs,
Sweet strums gently, darkening the sound with discreet bits of noise
and desolate Current 93-style lyrics-- the opener, "Puke a Pitch Black
Rainbow to the Sun", presents a good example of both inclinations
(i.e. the death of summer lyrically; backward guitar smashed against
dainty arpeggios).

Standing in contrast to the album's Victorian cover art, these nine austere pieces drift by in less than 30 minutes. (Where Sweet does link with the ornamentation is his antiquarian language á la
"fallow fields" and "august fortunes"). Like Samara Lubelski, Sweet
adds almost imperceptible touches-- more noticeably, there are the piercing feedback
peals of what sounds like a bent saw on "Claimant Reclaimed" and bells woven into guitar
rattles on "Our Canon of Transportation". Whatever the apparent
similitude, piano, cymbals, bowed everything, and sheets of computer
peals materialize over time. As with David Thomas Broughton, the
slight gradations create a space for hypnosis; but while Sweet and
Broughton share the downhearted William Blake thing, there's less
rawness and pastoralism, more craven, craggy, and brooding meditation in Boduf Songs' whisper.

His talent as an arranger offers various shades of black. The instrumental "Our Canon
of Transposition" finds castanets or censors clanging against an
ominous woodblock and reversed sound sheets. At one point, a murkier sound sinks the tone of
the piece, introducing a more frantic edge to the construction. "Lost
in Forests" pairs chirpy field recordings and Oren Ambarchi-style
gleams (kind of like skipping dusty fractals across a brook).
"Vapour Steals the Glow" lodges an underwater mallet into a drone
scape and then broadcasts it over AM radio. These miscellaneous
accents are beyond restrained, existing not so much as separate
flourishes, but rather accrued, integrated details.

This know-how is occasionally his undoing: Sweet enlarges his general
sound here/there, but the sad sack whisper and brushwood guitar remain
the same. The tempo's boosted with the raga instrumental, "Ape Thanks
Lamb"-- think Six Organs and the Sun City Girls-- but his preferred
pace is encapsulated in the opening sigh and 1-2-3 of "Oh Celebrate
Your Vague Words and Coquettish Sovereignty". It's that soporific Iron
& Wine hemisphere.

So while the album's a well-composed suite, the Catch-22 remains:
Certain pieces suffer from too much uniformity. As mentioned
above, the material's a couple of years old. From what I hear, there will
be a new collection in the fall, and at that point-- two Boduf albums
in hand-- it'll be interesting to assess Sweet's understated poetics,
to uncover what connections bridge the final track of this collection
and the dawn of his next chapter. For now, search out some opium and a
black light and commence nodding.